Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant – Nashville, TN

I was very excited as we planned the trip to Nashvegas to see that that the Grand Ole Opry would be at the Ryman on the weekend we were in town. We had taken the girls to The Opry over at Opryland twelve or thirteen years ago, but it wasn’t the experience I remembered as a kid, seeing it at the Ryman. And Jo had never been to the mother church of country music, so we decided to go on Friday, scoring some great last minute tickets, right in the center on the front row of the balcony.

I first noticed Puckett’s Grocery, as we were walking home from the Ryman to our hotel on Friday evening. The place was packed at 9:30, with a live band playing at the front of the house that you could see from the window. The crowd put the idea in my mind that this would possibly be a a good place for a meal, somewhere over the course the weekend.

Saturday morning, as I was about to head to a workshop out west of town, I ran down the street to Subway to grab some breakfast for the two of us. I got there right after eight and he had just opened – he overslept that morning. While he was working to get all the trays filled up I walked up the street and saw that Puckett’s was open for breakfast as well. I checked out the menu and thought it could be the perfect destination for Sunday morning.

After a debate about whether we should’ve had Prince’s Hot Chicken again on Saturday night (instead of what we ate) or whether they might be open for breakfast on Sunday, we decided that we would get up early, walk to Pucketts for breakfast and then head over to the flea market before we drove home.

The place was fairly quiet when we arrived shortly after seven, and we may have been the first people eating other than the work staff. We saw that they had a breakfast buffet back in the corner but chose to order from the menu instead.

Jo was immediately tempted by the sweet potato pancakes. I, on the other hand, am not a big sweet potato fan and was sold on the southern stack (slow smoked pulled pork, atop sweet potato pancakes and fried apples, topped with a fried egg, served with a side of our home fries):

Never in the world would I have thought of putting pork onto a waffle but man it was tasty. I did swap the sweet potato pancakes for buttermilk and had the eggs scrambled. The only thing that was missing was barbecue sauce. The eggs were fresh and cooked exactly as we asked. This was a good breakfast choice – we were heartily filled and ready for a full day of shopping. Onward we went.

Since we visited, I recently saw that Puckett’s original location, in Leiper’s Fork had been written up in the Nashville edition of Bearings (a great bi-weekly newsletter that you should consider subscribing to).